


magnolia

by owlinaminor



Series: author's favorites [10]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Nature Magic, POV Second Person, Speculative fiction, kami - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 17:22:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6529165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>there is a boy in the garden.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	magnolia

**Author's Note:**

> magnolia: an ancient, odd flower that symbolizes nobility, purity, and a love of nature.
> 
> this fic is inspired partially by the fact that i've been listening to the mountain goats a lot recently (in particular, to [hast thou considered the tetrapod](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yzdkdOjZhc)), and partially by some thoughts i've been having about symbolism in haikyuu - namely, how the conflict between shiratorizawa and karasuno represents a conflict between the innate strength of nature and the manufactured strength of technological innovation. (i'm probably going to put together a big meta post on this sometime soon. feel free to ask me about it and/or think i'm strange for reading this much into sports manga.)
> 
> thanks is due to [becky](https://twitter.com/dickaeopolis), who took a break from writing bokuoikuroo rugby au to beta this. truly a noble feat.
> 
> also: although it's never explicitly stated in the fic (since the pov is second person), ushijima is agender. (as ushijima is in pretty much every fic i write, tbh)

> _and alone in my room, i am the last of a lost civilization._
> 
> _i vanish into the dark and rise above my station._
> 
> \- hast thou considered the tetrapod, the mountain goats

 

there is a boy in the garden.

you have never seen him before.  he is small, shorter than the other boys you see racing through the streets, but his limbs stretch – his arms wave wildly about in the air as though he’s some kind of demon.  his face is smudged with dirt.  his clothes are stained in orange and yellow.  and his hair is bright red, like ripe strawberries, or the last rays of sunset, or the orchids in the gardens.

he stands, and he looks directly at you.  no human has ever done that before.

“hello,” you say.  your voice is unfamiliar – deeper, darker than you remember.  you haven’t used it in a long time.

“hi!” the boy replies.  he takes a step closer.  his face breaks open – like a flower blooming beneath the midday sun.  “i’m satori – what’s your name?”

you have a name.  you used to know it.  you open your mouth, hoping it will return to you, but it does not.

“wakatoshi.”

you look at the boy – at satori.  he is examining you closely, as though you’re a sign he’s struggling to read.

“wakatoshi,” he repeats.  “can i call you that?  it was the name of someone in a book i read – it means advantage, or something.  it’s a cool name!”

it seems as good a name as any.  you nod.

he smiles again.  slowly, you smile back.

and for a moment, you stand like that – smiling.  late afternoon sun paints the sky in violet and red and gold.  you want to ask him if he would keep talking, but you aren’t sure how.

“satori!” a new voice shouts.

“i’ve gotta go – that’s my mom.”  satori turns and starts running towards the street, in the direction of the voice.

you watch him go.  the magnolia trees cast shadows on the grass, but he races through them, unafraid.  you wonder if he will remember you.

“wakatoshi!” he shouts.

satori turns his head – looks at you.  his hair shines like copper in the receding sunlight.

“i’ll be back tomorrow!”

 

you do not expect him to return.

and yet the next afternoon, when you go to the garden, satori is already waiting for you – red hair sticking up from above the flowers.  reliable as the sun.

“wakatoshi!” he shouts.  and his face widens, opens – and you wonder at this new feeling in your heart, warm and full.  

you approach him.  he is wearing a different shirt from yesterday.  it’s bright orange, with figures running across it.  you ask him who they are, and his eyes open wide.

“one piece!” he says.  you ask him what the piece is of, and why there’s only one of it.

satori gapes at you – he looks like a fish, you think.  a bright red, shiny-scaled fish.

“it’s an anime,” he explains.  “about pirates and magic powers and trying to find treasure and it’s _so cool_ – haven’t you ever seen it?”

you have not.  you don’t know what anime is.

you tell him this, and satori stares at you as though he’s seen the ghosts of an entire city – then begins to explain, in detail, the art of shonen anime, his favorite shows, why they’re his favorites, and what he likes and doesn’t like about their corresponding manga forms.  suddenly, the advertisements you see in the windows of this store on the corner make much more sense.

“can i see some?” you ask him.  he takes a break from detailing the complex plot of something called _bleach_ and looks at you – and then his face opens up, his smile widens.

(you wonder how the world can seem so much brighter when he smiles.)

“you can come over to my house!” satori exclaims.  “we can watch one piece!  or bleach!  or dragon ball z!  oooh, or fulllmetal alchemist –”

“i can’t.”

“oh.”  satori frowns for a moment, but recovers quickly.  “then i’ll loan you my collection!”

you aren’t entirely sure what that means, but – you nod, anyway.  anything to keep him smiling.

 

satori loves to talk.

he is like a river, you think.  a river, or perhaps an ocean – an ocean of sentences rolling back and forth and crashing upon each other, his laughter and excited shouts riding the top like white foam.  he has opinions on every page he’s read, every character he’s encountered, even if they only had a couple of lines or appeared in the background of one chapter.

you tell him what you think about the most recent volume he lent you – and that’s enough for him to talk for hours.

time passes in a hazy collision of afternoon sunlight and fast words.  you sit down with him on the bench by the magnolia tree, the one with branches that stretch out wide like arms reaching for an embrace, when the sun is high in the sky – and by the time he’s finally run out of breath, the sky is melting to reds and purples, and the neon signs in the distance are far outshining any natural light.

he asks you questions, sometimes, and you answer in a voice growing more familiar by the day.  it’s rough, low, and doesn’t quite harmonize with his excited pitch, but he doesn’t seem to mind.  sometimes, you don’t know how to answer him, and he doesn’t seem to mind that, either.

satori’s world – the world of his manga and his anime and his smile – is like this, you think.  bright and simple, all the colors solid, the lines clean, the characters sorted easily into good or evil.  the heroes are always growing more powerful.  the fight is never quite impossible.  you wonder what it’s like, to live in his world.

but before you can find the words to ask him, he grows tired of talking – he wants to run, he says.  he wants to explore, he says.  and, of course, he wants you to explore with him.

 

and so, you show satori your city.

you run, and he follows – down streets, through alleys, across parks, around corners, up fire escapes.  he follows as you climb the tallest trees and follows as you venture through the narrowest tunnels.  he follows as you sprint through flowerbeds and follows as you wind across sidewalks.

he is not as fast as you are – nobody is.  he can match your pace in sprints, but only for a few seconds before slowing.  after long runs, he falls to the ground and sprawls out on his back, panting heavily and stretching his legs up, up, up in the air.

but you wait for him, and he gets up again.  he puts his hands on his hips, cocks his head, grins at you.

“alright, wakatoshi,” he says.  “where are we goin’ now?”

and you take him to the abandoned street corner where a juniper tree burst through the concrete, to the courtyard where niwaki are green all winter long, to the rooftop garden where you can see all the way to the mountains.  you show him _your_ city – not a city of concrete and steel and neon, but a city of grass-green and sky-blue and sunlight-gold.

“how do you know all of these places?” he asks you one late afternoon, as you watch the sunset from the top floor of an old shrine.

you could tell him that these places are part of you, as much a part of you as your eyes or your hands – that they call to you, they rejoice when you visit – that you are stronger when you leave them than when you arrived.  you could tell him, but you don’t quite know how.

so you shrug, and you say, “i just know.”

he says okay, and looks back out at the view.

 

one day, satori arrives at the garden, and he is tired.

his bones ache, his lungs are weary – you can feel the exhaustion, dragging down his limbs like stones sinking in the river.  you can feel the burning in his muscles, as though a forest fire rampaged through and scorched his willpower to ash.  if you concentrate, you can feel his heart beating – just a little bit too fast.

you ask him what happened.

“oh, practice was so rough today,” he says.  “we had to do twenty rounds of flying falls, then a bunch of suicide runs, and then fifty jump serves … i feel like my legs are gonna fall off.”

you consider this.  he is tired, yes, but you do not think his legs are going to fall off – it seems more like he did a lot of running without stretching enough.

“are you sure you aren’t just tired because everyone else on your team is better than you?” you ask.

satori’s mouth drops open – a round o, like the bud of a flower.

“wakatoshi!” he exclaims, once he recovers.  “that was such a good burn!  wow!”

he holds up one hand, palm flat, facing you.

you’ve never seen this gesture before.

he looks at you, smile slipping from his face.  “high five?”

“high five?” you echo.

“yeah.  you know, when someone does something cool, and you hold up your hand, and they slap it.”

you look at satori’s hand – hanging in the air nervously, like a sun with no sky to hold it steady.

“i can’t,” you say.

“oh.”  his hand drops – no, it droops.  his whole body droops, like a tree laden with heavy snow.  and you’re struck by the strangest urge to grab his hand anyway, to pull him closer, to shake him until his smile returns – but you can’t.  you know you can’t.

“what were you practicing?” you ask, instead.

and he starts to talk about this game called volleyball – about jumping, and running, and blocking, and the look on his opponent’s face when he scores a point, and he rush of excitement when his team wins.  it’s only after he’s insisted on demonstrating, jumping up and waving his arms about as though playing an entire game by himself, that he demands –

“why can’t you?”

you look at satori – sitting in the grass now, legs splayed out in front of him like growing roots.  “why can’t i what?”

“high five.  do you parents not want you to touch other people or something?”

you hesitate.  “or something.”

satori pulls his legs in, moves closer.  he stares up at you.  his eyes are wide, and wide, and sunset-red – and you wonder if, maybe, when you tell him, he will run away and never return to your garden.

you wonder when you decided that you would tell him.

“i don’t have parents,” you say carefully.  the words are difficult, but they arrive – they arrive just when you need them.  “i had a family once.  before there was a city.  when there was just a village, and a forest, and a mountain.  but the city grew, and my family left.  the spirits of the mountain, of the forest – they’re all gone.  nobody visits their shrines.  nobody asks them for a good harvest.  nobody - nobody _harvests_ anything.  and - and everyone left.  i’m only here because i’m careful.  or i’m strong.  i don’t know.  but i try to remember them, and i try to look after what’s left.”

you wait for him to laugh at you.  wait for him to tell you he doesn’t believe you.  wait for him to run away.

“so, you’re … a kami?” satori asks.  his voice is quiet, whispering like wind through the grass.

you nod.

“oh, so that’s how you know all the cool places!” he exclaims.  “and how you can make the flowers stand up straighter, and the trees look greener!  that’s so cool!”

he’s grinning.  grinning – impossibly, incredibly, irrevocably as the sun.

“it’s cool,” you echo.

“ _dude_ , so cool.”  satori tumbles onto his back, folds his hands behind his head.  “just wait until i tell the people at school i’m friends with a _kami_.”

“you can’t,” you say.

he sits back up.  looks at you.

“no human contact.  nobody else can see me.  or talk to me.  just you.”

satori nods, and lies back down.  “and no high fives,” he adds.  his voice is strange and quiet again – you don’t like it, like this.

but you repeat it, because you have to.  “no high fives.”

he stares up at the sky, starts to point out funny clouds – and you follow his gaze, your chest oddly full of sunlight and blue sky and _friends._

 

satori teaches you volleyball.

you find an empty lot, tucked between a laundromat and a tiny convenience store, with cracking asphalt and an old net left over from some tenant in the apartment building nearby.  it’s old and smells of sewage, and sometimes the wind picks up and sends your volleyball flying dangerously close to nearby windows. but when satori arrives, determined grin on his face as he tells you what he wants to practice today, it might as well be a stadium that seats thousands.

satori teaches you to serve – arms back, stance tall, toss high.  he teaches you to spike – legs extended, shoulders back, force coming up from your whole body.  he teaches you to block – arms up, core steady, timing perfect.  you hit balls until the slap of skin against rubber becomes as natural as the soft whisper of grass on your back.  hours pass, time marked only by the reddening of your palms – as though you’re being slowly but surely burnt by the sun.

satori complains that you never get tired.  that you’re already so much better at this than he is, and it’s not _fair,_ you’ve only been playing for a few months, and he’s been playing for _years._  you’re too strong, you’re too powerful.  but he continues to teach you all the same.

“i wish i could high five you,” satori says.  he’s sprawled out on the ground, red hair tangling with the weeds poking out of cracks in the pavement, fingers sticky with popsicle juice courtesy of the nearby convenience store.  “when my friends on the team do something cool, i high five them.  and you do so many more cool things than they do!  it’s not fair.”

you don’t answer him.  but the next time it happens – the next time one of your spikes shakes the earth beneath you – you hold your hand up.  he grins – warm and dazzling and bright – and holds up his.

and you wonder if this, this spiking the ball into his hand as he blocks you, this answering his grins with your own, this slow burning of both your palms – if this is what it would feel like to high five for real.

 

satori grows taller.

you don’t notice, at first – his limbs extend slower than the stems of orchids, slower than new shoots on the magnolia trees, slower than the herbs in the corner of the garden.  but you notice the shape of his face changing, the span of his chest broadening.  you notice the new definition of his muscles, the light red hair appearing in the hollow of his chest like rough autumn grass.

you notice when you stand next to him, and he is a few centimeters taller than you.

“you’re changing,” you tell him, one afternoon as you stretch together in the grass – legs up, arms behind your heads, muscles burning.

“what?” he asks.  “changing how?  or do you mean i’m getting cooler?  because that’s definitely true.”

“no, you.”  you struggle to describe it.  “you’re taller.  and broader.  like a tree after a few springs.”

satori drops his leg, pushes up to his knees, and grins at you – smile lopsided, shirt stained with grass and dirt.  “yeah, man, it’s called puberty.  does that not happen to you?”

you try to remember.  your family – some of them were older, you think.  grayer.  some were younger, greener.  some were in between.  but you don’t remember growing – you only remember opening your eyes in a field of flowers, orchids blooming, wind whistling through the trees.  you think you have always been like this.

but you look at satori, and you want to be taller.

“i don’t know,” you say.

he cocks his head at you – like a dog you sometimes pass on the sidewalk, hoping for attention.  you close your eyes.

you close your eyes, and feel the wind whistling through the trees, the orchids blooming, the eagles calling in the sky somewhere far above you.  it’s warm – just the right temperature, with the breeze.  tonight, it might rain – rain is good, you think.  good for plants.  good for growth.

you can feel the trees of your garden – the stretch of their branches, the strength of their roots, the steadiness of their stems.  always growing, always reaching for the sun.

you are reaching for the sun.

your limbs ache for a moment – your face stings – your bones crack and fall into place, like branches after a thunderstorm.

you open your eyes.  satori is staring at you.

“shit,” he says.  “guess i’m not taller than you anymore.”

 

time passes, and satori is tired more and more.

he arrives in the afternoon, or the evening – sometimes, the sun has already drooped beneath the horizon.  sometimes, he tells you he can only stay for a few minutes, because he has homework to do, and practice in the morning, and a team he can’t let down.  (he’s vice-captain now, he says – and you aren’t entirely sure what that means, but the combination of pride and concern in his voice are enough for you to understand.)

he doesn’t quite smile as he used to, you think.  there is something missing, as though the sun has hidden behind a cloud, or risen without its usual enthusiasm.  he tells you he wants to talk, then sits a few centimeters away from you on the bench, staring at his hands.  the branches of the magnolia tree are drooping, laden too heavy with the memory of snow.

he seems – nervous.  and you don’t know what to do with _nervous_ , but you don’t know how to ask him what’s wrong.  you only know how to ask him to keep coming back.

and he does.  he comes when the sun hangs low in the sky, when the clouds fade to hazy gray on a backdrop of violet, when the stars are just peeking out of the cover of twilight, but he comes.

 

“wakatoshi.”

you look up.  satori is staring at you, his gaze dark and full beneath the moonlight.  he sounds strangely serious – tone missing the teasing, the cajoling you’ve come to expect.

“satori,” you say.

he looks at you.  you can hear his heart beating, loud and erratic as a firecracker at the cherry blossom festival.

“i think i’m in love with you,” he says.

you look at him.  you roll his words around in your mind, let them plant seeds, grow roots, reach down until they tangle you.

far above your head, a plane passes.  if you concentrate, you can hear its engine roar.

_i think i'm in love with you._

“how do you know?” you ask.

“i – i _know_.”  satori breathes in, breathes out.  you wait.  “i know because – because i feel different, when i’m with you.  i feel like everything is more interesting, more fun – like the world has colors i didn’t even know existed before.  like … like you’re my favorite person.  and anything i’m doing, i want to do with you.  and that i want to … to high five you.  and i want to touch you.  and – and that if you asked me to, i would cross the world for you.”

he doesn’t look at you as he says this.  he looks up – up at the sky, up at the stars, peeking through the shadows of the trees like whispers of spirits long gone.  you can hear his heart beating.  if you concentrate, you can imagine you can hear yours.  you can imagine it beats in time with his.

“satori,” you say.

he looks at you.  if you had a heart, it would stop.

“i think i’m in love with you, too.”

satori breathes in, breathes out.  it sounds like the waves of the ocean, like the roar of a plane’s engine.  it sounds like a sob.

you wonder what his hand would feel like – if you could reach out and grab it.  it would be warm, you think.  warm as the stars far above.

 

satori is good at volleyball.

you knew he was talented, before – knew, when he taught you to jump and serve and block, rising above the net like a natural disaster waiting to strike – but you had never watched him quite like this.  you had never seen him in a game, tearing down enemies with the touch of his palm and the curve of his smirk.  you had never seen him yell for his teammates, or raise their morale when they grow weary, or jump half a meter in the air when they score.

you stand at the window of satori’s high school gym, face as close to the pane as you can safely get.  his school is having a practice match today, he told you.  the other team is a powerhouse, he told you.  he’s going to win, he told you.

and – and he is.  he commands the court as easily as he commands the ball, jumps and spikes and blocks as easily as breathing.  he watches the other players with eyes redder than a harvest moon and twice as hungry.  he taunts, and he cheers, and he wins.

he stares at the spikers of the other team as though he wants to eat them alive – and you want to trace his smile, you want to feel the red of his palm.

you want to stand on the court with him.

a gust of wind knocks you back from the window, sudden and forceful as a hurricane.  you turn and run, faster than you’ve ever run before – back to your garden, back to your trees and your flowers and your grass.

you don’t know how to do this.  you don’t know how to want.  you don’t know how to feel – how to feel human.  you don’t think you were built for this.

but you stand in your garden, wanting.  feeling.  you are shaking and shaking and shaking – and the garden is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking – and you are burning and burning and burning.

you look down at your hands.

once, you think, you were able to draw up flowers from beneath the soil.  now, all you can do is slap a volleyball, grab a tree branch, reach for a phantom you can never quite catch.

you fall to your knees in the grass.  you put your hands over your ears.  you block out the wind and the sunlight and the world.  and you _scream_.

nobody hears you.

 

the city is contracting around you.

you feel it pushing, feel it pulling, feel it reaching its arms up and out and around – like a giant robot crushing the earth beneath its feet until nothing remains but scorched pavement.  like an earthquake engineered by men in suits and construction helmets.  like an electrical fire.

sometimes, it feels as though every time you set out for a run, you find three new buildings sprouting up like weeds of steel or glass, twisting up into the sky.  the air grows bitter in your lungs, grows poisonous like sulfuric acid or carbon monoxide.  the clouds are always a shade too gray.

satori’s visits grow rarer and rarer.  he has exams, he says – tests that require long hours in rooms with no windows, long hours hunched over a notebook, long hours breathing the wrong air.  you feel trapped just thinking about it.  and you feel caged – like the fish in a garden you once found, swimming and swimming with no hope of escape.

“can’t you just leave?” satori asks you, when you tell him you are trapped.

and you look up at the sky and watch the birds soaring overhead.  you wonder what the world looks like to an eagle, or a hawk – you wonder if they can see beyond the confines of brick and steel and concrete.  you wonder what the world looks like to the spirits of the mountain, the spirits of the ocean.  you wonder how wide the world stretches – if it can grow fast enough.

if you slept, you think, you would have nightmares of bulldozers coming for your garden.  coming for your garden, like they came for the abandoned street corner where a juniper tree burst through the concrete, for the courtyard where niwaki are green all winter long, for the rooftop garden where you can see all the way to the mountains.

“i can’t,” you tell him.   _i can’t._

 

and then, one day, satori arrives at sunset.

“i have to leave,” he says.

you take a step closer – he holds up his hand.  you remember volleyball games and late afternoon sunlight.  you remember small hands raised in burning victory.  this is nothing like that.

this is – he mumbles something about college acceptances, about volleyball scholarships, about education programs – but all you can hear is the roar of bulldozers, louder in your ears than any rumble of thunder.

you see buildings where there are supposed to be trees – you hear sirens where there are supposed to be birdsongs – you smell dumpsters where there are supposed to be flowers.  this world – this steel and concrete, neon and gray, dirty and loud – it does not want you.  it never wanted you.

you look at satori.

“i want to touch you,” you say.

satori’s eyes are wide – wide as the garden, as the ocean, as the night sky.

“but you’ll –”

“i know.”

“i thought – i thought you couldn’t leave.”

“this is how i can.”

“and you – you want to?  you’re sure?”

you nod.

there is a strange wetness on satori’s face.  as though he ran through the rain – or as though he is raining.  as though he is his own thunderstorm.

tears, you think.  those are tears.  satori is crying.

you take a step closer.  he stands still.  you reach up – slow, tentative, like breathing in – and cup his cheek.

his skin is rough, and wet, and a little bit warm.  it seems so easily broken, but you’ve seen it stand up to rain, to dirt, to sweat.  satori is warm beneath your fingers, warm and steady, and you can feel his heart beating –

he reaches up and pulls you closer.  closer, closer, _closer_.  his arms around your neck, his face tucked into your shoulder, his hips pressed into your waist.  you wonder how can humans do this – how they can stand to be so far apart from one another, when they know that this exists.

you pull back – ever so slightly, you pull back.  you tilt his chin up, meet his eyes with your own.

“you won’t forget me,” you tell him.

“i won’t,” he says.

your foreheads meet like renegade planets, pulled from their gravitational orbits into something greater.  something stronger.

you are the rain filling the clouds.  you are the magnolia trees stretching their branches up to the sun.  you are the flowers growing up through cracks in the concrete.  you are the mountains standing steady against the growing city.  you are the eagles calling out to the sun.  you are satori’s heart, beating so loudly in his chest you fear it will break.  you are –

you are.

 

_wakatoshi._

 

_i won’t forget you.  i won’t.  i swear._

 

_i think i’m stronger, for having met you._

 

there was a boy in the garden.

the garden is a forest, now.  the city grew and grew until it ripped the earth bare.  and its towers crumbled, and its signs grew dark, and its sky opened up to more stars than you thought existed.  the city did not capsize with ringing battlecries or rampaging flames – it collapsed into ash with a low rumbling like thunder from beneath the ground.

and the trees grew, and the animals returned, and the mountain swept up all of her children and told them to roam free.  your family took back its streams and its valleys, its flowers and its vines.  your family took back the whistling of the wind and the pounding of the rain.  but the sun – the sun is yours.

you tell your family of satori.  you tell them of his world – a world where the colors are bright, the people are smiling, and the conversations stretch long into the afternoon.  a world where exploration and exclamation are the only ways worth spending time.  a world where making a friend is as easy as stepping into a garden.

you tell them.  you remember.  you smile up at the sun - and the sun smiles back.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor)/[tumblr](http://officialyachihitoka.tumblr.com/)


End file.
